


what would be enough

by iaintinapatientphase



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-22 21:35:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8301998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaintinapatientphase/pseuds/iaintinapatientphase
Summary: Alexander sends his father an email every week.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is just an idea i couldn't get out of my head. theoretically happens in "what we know" somewhere, but you don't have to read that to get this.
> 
> i'm on [tumblr](http://iaintinapatientphase.tumblr.com/), come say hi.

Alexander sends his father an email every week. Every Friday before bed, he sits in the armchair in their bedroom, legs crossed, laptop balancing carefully, and types for at least an hour.

Before Eliza really _knew_ , back when they had just started dating, he’d write them on his phone, her curled around his back and her chin resting on his shoulder, reading along; or he’d borrow her laptop, sit against her headboard while she leaned back against his chest and he didn’t mind that having his arms around her meant he had to type slower.

Before Eliza got it, she found it kind of sweet, the long notes about what was going on with the war, Alexander’s breathless assurances that he would share more if it wasn’t classified. He let himself brag in a way that he didn’t with most people— she’d bet that his father is one of the only people who got the real truth, that Alexander was more than an aide, that he was holding the country and the army together with all his strength, every letter sent another fortifying stitch in the overstrained seams.

Before Eliza understood, she was flattered by the way her name started to pop up, more and more, first as an exciting new development; then as a fact, a constant in Alexander’s life; then finally watched him try to find the words to his father they were getting married. She watched the words appear on the screen, describing her as thoughtful, intelligent, captivating, a warm kind of feeling spreading through her chest and body and she never loved him as much as he did as when she watched him type: “I can’t wait for you to meet her. All of this was worth it— everything’s going to be fine, now that she’s here.”

She never felt worse — and Alexander hates it, the way she can’t help but feel sorry for him when things like this come up — than the day she finally understood.

It's not like it took very long, but that's because nothing for them took very long, what with the whole engagement barely a month and a half after they met and the wedding just a few weeks after that. The Friday after the engagement, she was stretched out reading on his shitty army issue bed, one hand petting idly at his hair while he sat on the floor and wrote his weekly missive.

“What did he say?”

“Huh?”

“What did he say? About us getting married?” She held up her left hand, examined the ring glancing in the light. She still felt giddy every time she felt the weight of it there.

She got a little distracted, having stupid fantasies about the wedding and the whole _Mrs. Elizabeth Schuyler-Hamilton_ of it all, didn't realize he didn't answer for a minute.

“Alexander,” she said, sitting up, suddenly anxious. “What did he say?”

He kept typing, and was definitely ignoring her, and she was definitely not going to have that.

“Hey,” she said, tugging lightly on a lock of hair. “Talk to me.”

She watched as his shoulders tightened and he tried to physically shake the thoughts from his head. “He didn't really say anything.”

Eliza tried her hardest not to react the way she wanted to, which was screaming _what the fuck?_ Instead she said slowly, carefully, “you did tell him, right? You aren't—”

“It's not that,” he said. “It's never that, Eliza, it's not about you. I told him.”

“He just didn't say anything about it? What did he say?”

“Eliza, don't freak out, I know that you're worried he and whoever else won't like you but I also know that you know that I think that's insane.” He was rambling, had his “dispensing facts” tone on, and he was so uncomfortable she wanted to let it go but she couldn't and she wouldn't.

She hopped off the bed, knelt next to him. He still wouldn't look at her, his jaw clenched tight, blanked out sort of gaze at the keyboard, and in the bright light of his laptop screen he looked incredibly pale. “Alexander —”

“He didn't say anything about it because he didn't respond at all, okay?” he snapped defensively. “It's not about you. Of course he'll like you. He just didn't respond yet.”

“Oh,” she said, relieved that was all it was. “It's not a problem, I was just wondering.”

“Okay, good,” he said, but she could tell it wasn't at all. He started rolling his ankle back and forth, the laptop tilting and tipping with the movement of his leg.

She reached out, traced the three little freckles on his cheek in an isosceles triangle. She could see the words straining under his skin, trembling at the tips of his fingertips, and all she had to do was wait.

“He hasn't responded in a while,” he said to his knees.

“Okay,” she said carefully, not sure what “a while” meant in this situation. Judging by how cagey he was being, it wasn’t the same “forever” he accused her of taking to call him back, or “practical decades” he complained about missing her for whenever she didn’t spend the night. Alexander often exaggerated, was always dramatic, but this didn’t feel the same way.

“He's busy. He travels a lot and doesn't always have access to the Internet. And I write too much, they're always too long, they're too long to read, he probably doesn't have time.”

“He wouldn’t — you don't write too much,” she said, feeling stupid. Alexander is the definition of too much, spent all his time arranging and expelling the words in his head, but it was never a bad thing. She lived for the thick letters he had messengers to her nightly, abandoned her work to trade long texts all day. Of course it's “too much,” but she can't imagine ever having enough. “How long?”

“A while,” he admitted, every line of his body screaming his reluctance.

“Okay. It's okay, babe,” she said, running a hand over his arm in what she hoped was a soothing manner. “It's okay.”

“It's been a couple years. Since just after I joined the army."

A wave of hot, sickening anger flooded through her, overwhelming the delicate touch that she'd been trying to handle this with, holding his fragile fragile feelings in her hands like they're glass, picking her way carefully through the minefield of his many painful memories. She loved him, so much, all of his brilliance and his loud mouth and the way his eyes light up when he talks about the things and people he cares about, his gaping empty heart so desperate to hold onto the people he's chosen, and the thought of his only living parent tossing that gift aside made her furious.

But he's so vulnerable, and she recognized the immense trust that it took for him to tell her that, and she wanted to give him a soft landing at the bottom of the cliff he just jumped off of.

“No worries,” she made herself say, pressing a soft kiss in the center of that triangle on his cheek. “He's busy. And I'm not going anywhere. There's plenty of time.”

“Yeah,” he exhaled heavily, relaxing slightly as she nestled herself into his side and rested her head on his shoulder.

“You're stuck with me,” she said. “We've got all the time in the world.”

He didn’t respond, just turned enough to kiss her on the forehead, and started typing again.

He didn't stop, with the typing, all the way to independence and to his law degree and the assembly and _The Federalist_ , all the way to her Alexander being one of the most powerful men in the country. He still sent an email to his father every week, and she can count on one hand how many times he received a response. It made her so sick, the way she couldn't be happy for him, the way she couldn't share in the total, all consuming joy that seeing his father's name in his inbox gave him.

It still bugged her. It happened so infrequently she couldn't even work out a pattern or find something unique in Alexander's behavior that she could attribute to the sudden influx of paternal attention. It would be worth it, maybe, if it helped soothe that gaping wound instead of just inflaming it. It wouldn't be so goddamn sad if a response didn't make him a thousand times more earnest, so convinced that the next two thousand word email would be the one to get another response.

It was that look on his face that made her say yes when he asked her — whispered into her shoulder, late one night — if the next baby was a boy, if they could maybe name him James Alexander Hamilton.

It's not like she had to agree, they had discussed the other kids’ names for hours. She could have suggested something else. But they had named Philip after _her_ father and Angelica after her sister. Alex was named for him, of course, and the kids all had his last name even if she hyphenated. (There were plenty of Schuylers, and his was a name she thought worth remembering.) So it's not that crazy that he would suggest his father as the next of their relatives to name a kid after. James is a nice name.

But she thinks about him sitting up after long weeks of work, finding time while literally fighting a war, carefully selecting the best family picture from last week's outing, all for nothing. She thinks about it, and she wants to say no, to save him from that inevitable disappointment.

“Eliza?” he had asked, so vulnerable, holding his heart out in his shaking hand, and she couldn't be yet another person to reject him.

So she had said yes, and it had made him happy, and that's all she had ever wanted.

James was beautiful, so beautiful, dark hair and eyes and long eyelashes fanning out over smooth golden skin. This was the fourth time now, and she'd never understand how she always forgot what it felt like to hold her baby in her arms, to meet the person that she had carried around in there for the past nine months. She never got tired of seeing their features in their tiny faces, her nose and Alexander's chin and the near-black brown of both of their eyes. She's biased, but it's possible that their kids are the most perfect combination of two parents to ever exist.

It was a relatively easy birth, after a relatively easy pregnancy — though they've all seemed easy after the first, sitting up all night fearing that she'd be a twenty three year old widow and single mom — and she was feeling incredibly happy, putting the baby down for a nap while Philip and Angelica were reading the couch and Alex was happily talking to himself building towers on the floor. Alexander was working from home, Peggy was coming for the weekend, and everything was pretty close to perfect.

“Hey,” she says softly to Alexander, settling on the couch and nudging her feet under his thigh.

He shifts to type with one hand, reaches over and squeezes her knee lightly. “Hey, baby.”

“Do you have a lot left to do?”

“Not too much,” he says. He smiles, a little, like he couldn’t help himself, had been trying to hide it, before going casual, neutral again. “My dad emailed me.”

“Oh,” she says uneasily, in what she hopes in a suitably enthusiastic tone. Alexander's so sensitive about this. He's snapped at her for being both not excited enough and too surprised. She doesn't know what he wants, but she doubts he knows it himself.

It must be what he’s looking for — he nods excitedly. “Yeah! He must be somewhere with Internet. He's been busy lately, remember he was traveling between a couple places?”

“Kind of,” she says. She never remembers the specifics of his excuses, only the flimsiness. “Did you send him any pictures of the baby?”

“Of course! I sent the one of you with the ponytail, which I know you think is dumb but it's too precious for words,” he says teasingly, glancing up at her with a smile that breaks her heart.

“That's because you're the one who did it.”

“I've got mad skills,” he says absently, his attention back on his screen. He doesn't mutter aloud like he does when reading almost everything else, but she watches him read it silently, feeling sicker and sicker as the shining hope in his eyes dims, as the openness in his face slowly shuts. She's not surprised, she'll never be surprised, but she'll never stop hoping right along with him.

She's not going to ask. She's not going to. He'll deal with the disappointment, like he always does, by pretending nothing happened and freaking out about it later. She can't make him talk to her, not with this. With everything else, she has no problem yelling right back at him or yanking his phone out of his hands, but this— she can't make herself do it. He’ll overwork, as is his usual coping mechanism, and maybe he'll call Angelica for a distraction, and all those things are good, they'll soothe it in the daytime and help him get through the initial blow. But it's Eliza that'll have to make him an appointment with Dr. Garza, Eliza that'll get Philip to ask him to go play soccer at the park, Eliza that'll wake up in the middle of the night to his arms tight around her, Eliza that'll help him shake that feeling of being left behind and alone and helpless.

Eliza looks over at Alex, happily building up and knocking his towers down over and over and over, reminds herself to give her husband time before she starts trying to fix whatever damage he’s done to himself this time.

“Hey, Liza, what's the bank login?” Alexander asks casually. “Did we update it? I can't remember.”

“Why?” she asks suspiciously.

“Hmm?” He types something else, fake oblivious.

“Why do you need the bank login?”

He pauses for a moment, tilts his head. “Do _not_ lie to me,” she warns before he can open his mouth.

“I wasn't going to,” he says, glaring. “He's in trouble. He got screwed over and can't get off the island until he can pay down some of his debt.”

“Really.”

“Eliza,” he sighs, exhausted. “It's not his fault. The other investors cut him out. They were just using him for his name.”

“That's not why I'm angry—” he looks up, startled “—yes, Alexander, I'm furious, but the stupid money scheme isn't the point. That email is three lines long.”

“So?”

“How long is the one you sent him?”

He bristles. “Jesus, Eliza, I'm not going to compare word count with my _father_.”

“When was the last time he responded to you?”

“He's busy, he's been traveling and he doesn't always have access to email.”

“That's bullshit and you know it.”

“It's not,” he snaps. “You have no idea what you're talking about.”

Eliza shuts her eyes tight, presses her lips together, swallows back the rage on the tip of her tongue. “Philip?” she calls.

“Yeah?”

“Can you and Angelica help Alex take his blocks and play upstairs?”

He nods seriously. “James is asleep. I'll make sure we don't wake him up.”

Eliza could cry, he's so sweet, so smart, so eager to be big brother. “Thank you, baby,” she says, ruffles his hair as he passes and helps Alex throw all his toys in their box.

Alexander is resolutely ignoring her, pretending like he doesn't know what she's doing. He's probably spinning his argument in his head, planning his words and his evidence and all the ways he's going to prove her wrong. Eliza's never gotten over it, the way he tries to prove her wrong about her own feelings sometimes, but she loves him, even if he is a total and complete nightmare sometimes, and she’s going to be calm and sensitive to his feelings and she is going to fix this, once and for fucking all.

She turns back to him as soon as the kids disappear upstairs. “Alexander.”

“You didn't give me the new password,” he says irritably.

Eliza concentrates as hard as she can and unclenches her fists. “Don't.”

“You didn't.”

“No, I didn't, and I'm not going to.”

“Fine, I’ll call the bank.”

“No, you won’t. They’re closed, it’s after seven.”

“I’m the Treasury Secretary. I think I can get a fucking local bank open on a Thursday night.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. “We need to talk about this first.”

“He needs money. I have money to give him. It's not something I have to—”

“ _We_ absolutely do need to discuss it,” Eliza interrupts. “How much is he asking for?”

“He's my father, Eliza, it doesn't matter.”

“Try again.”

He scowls. "Ten thousand."

"Absolutely not."

"It would be a loan, he said —"

"No fucking way."

“You said—”

“Alexander, I swear to god —”

“You _said_ , before Philip was born, when Angelica and Church wanted to give us a loan and I wanted to set up a timeline for paying them back, you said that you don't need to worry about things like that with family.”

“That was different. That's Angelica and Church.”

“And this is my father.”

“Exactly! We see Angelica and Church all the time, it’s _Angelica_ ,” she says. “Also, Church has more money than God. You and I are barely putting anything in savings. We just had a fourth kid, and I won’t be back at work for a few months.”

“We have enough for important things like this.”

“It's not the same!” she says, frustrated. She doesn't understand how he can compare _Angelica_ to his absent father. Angelica has always been and always will be there, his father — she's never even met him.

“I don't understand what the difference is,” he says recklessly, and Eliza feels her grip on her cool slipping away. He’ll never forgive her if she says it, and she'll never forgive him if he makes her.

“Alexander—”

“What? What's the problem? Families help each other out, that's what _you_ said,” he insists.

“Yeah, _families_ do,” she says viciously, beyond being careful with his feelings. He literally cannot let her win, can't let her say anything without doing his best to prove her wrong. She can't do this with him when he wants to be an asshole, and it's not her job to coddle him.

“Whatever you're trying to say,” he says, voice going low and dangerous and so different from his usual indignant shouting, “whatever you're trying to say, don't. You don't get it. Just because it's not a picture perfect J. Crew catalog platonic ideal doesn't mean I don't have a family. I do.”

“Did he even acknowledge the baby?” she demands.

He clenches his jaw, looks down at the floor.

“Did he?”

“He's not great with emotional stuff, some people are just like that, it's not his fault.”

“Don't bullshit me, answer the question.”

He pauses, biting his lip. “It's just a quick thing he sent, he must not have had time to go fully into everything he wanted to say.”

“God damn it, Alexander, yes or no?”

“No, okay, are you happy now?” he yells angrily. “I'm sure he's going to, I'm responding with the transfer right now and when he doesn't have to worry about people hunting him down for money he doesn't have I'm sure he'll have time to focus on other things.”

“How long does it take to say ‘congratulations?’ James is _named after him_ , he can't give you one words acknowledgement?”

“You have no idea what it's like to worry about money, _Elizabeth_ —”

“Oh, don't be such an asshole,” she snaps. He only ever drags up her full name when he's trying to make her feel bad about being born well off. He's a much bigger snob than she is, but if he wants to do that, that's fine.

“— it kind of takes over everything else. You don't have time to think about miscellania,” he says dismissively. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Did you just call our son ‘miscellania?’”

“That’s not what I was saying, you’re not listening, you don’t get it.”

Eliza shoves the heels of her hands into her eyes. If he tells her that one more time she’s going to scream.

“Don’t send him that money. Do not.”

“So you can make decisions without ‘discussion,’ but I can’t?” Alexander asks, voice rising indignantly. “A little hypocritical, don’t you think?”

“You’re wrong, and I’m right, and I don’t care!” Eliza shouts right back at him. “Your father is awful, Alexander, he ignores you for years and pops up and asks for money and you won’t hear from him until the newborn upstairs we named after him is going to kindergarten. I don't understand why you're so insistent on setting yourself up to be disappointed again and again and again. You know he's not going to change. Just let it go. It'll be easier.”

“Let it go? He's my father, I'm not going to just let go of — Eliza,” he says, pained. “He's all I have left.”

“What about me? And the kids? You have a family already, a real one, you don't have to settle for scraps and emails every five years. You don't have to put up with that,” she says, softer, and she hopes that for a second he's dropped his guard enough to listen.

His jaw clenches, furious again. “You don't get it. You don't. You've never dealt with anything difficult or complicated or hard in your entire goddamn life and you don't understand and I don't want to hear it anymore.”

“You think I want to keep having this conversation? Alexander, it _kills_ me, watching you go through this again and again and again. I'm just trying to save you more pain, because he doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care about you, and he's not going to, and I wish you would realize that and stop expecting some kind of happy reunion that isn't coming.”

The words have no sooner left her mouth then she feels sick, wishing she could take it back. Alexander's gone perfectly still, and his silence is worse than any angry thing he could ever say to her.

“Alexander,” she whispers, “baby, I didn't mean that, I was just —”

“You did,” he says shortly. “And you're wrong. He does care.”

“I know, I know, of course he does.” She steps closer and he backs away, and she feels like she might cry. “I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” he says, head jerking oddly as he picks up his phone and wallet from the coffee table. “I have to go.”

“Alexander, please —”

“It's _fine_. I'll be back,” he says, still with that terrifying blankness, and she can't make herself follow.

\---------

It's dark before he comes home. Philip, Angelica, and Alex all went down easy, and accepted her excuses for their father — he had to work, she said, and they believed her. He usually does.

The prospect of doing anything in the too empty, too quiet house was too much to bear, so she got into bed and tried to make herself focus on the book Peggy's been bugging her to read for months now. She can't focus, not that she thought she would be able to, and pretty much just stares at her knees, feeling evil and awful and horrible, until she hears the door open.

It takes a few, agonizing minutes. She can hear the kids doors opening, because of course he's checking on them, because he's a great father, and a great husband, and Eliza just stomped all over his biggest insecurity because she doesn't like the reminder that everything isn't great and perfect all the time.

His footsteps get closer, and for a second she panics and considers hiding in their bathroom or something else stupid and pointless that will delay the inevitable for another ten seconds. But she doesn’t, and he appears in their doorway a few seconds later, looking exhausted.

“Hi,” she says tentatively, putting aside her book.

“I’m fine,” he says before she can even ask. “I didn’t send him any money, if that’s what you’re waiting up to find out.”

“I wasn’t,” she says, stung.

He shrugs. “Well, I didn’t.” He deposits his things on the dresser, gets pajamas out. Doesn’t look at her.

She wraps her arms around her knees, watches him change for bed. “Are you —”

“I’m _fine_ , Eliza. I just want to go to bed.”

“Okay,” she says softly. She can’t really move, the situation feels too delicate. They’ve fought before, they’ve had their share of truly ugly fights, but it’s always felt mutual, not like she went too far. And he was a dick, too, she hasn’t forgotten, but it’s not the same.

He disappears to brush his teeth, and Eliza fights back the sudden lump in her chest. She hates feeling like this, she just wants her husband to be here and normal and everything to be fine. She hates his fucking father for doing this to them.

Alexander gets into bed next to her, and she waits for him to say something, _anything_ , but he doesn’t. His arm extends and then jerks back as he stops himself from reaching for her like he does every other night.

“I’m sorry, Alexander, I’m so sorry,” she says, rambling and desperate. “I was cruel and awful and I was just saying it because I was upset. I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s fine.”

“No,” she says, voice breaking. “It’s not. I’m _sorry_.”

“Don’t be,” he says tightly. “It’s fine. It’s over. Let's forget about it.”

“Alexander, please, it's not fine, and you're not alright.”

“Jesus, Eliza, can you just let it the fuck go?” he snaps. “Or do you want to try to make it worse?”

She blinks, taken aback, and the tears threatening to fall finally do.

“Fuck,” he hisses under his breath, reaches out and takes her hand. “Eliza, I'm sorry, baby, don't cry.”

“Don't apologize to me,” she says, crying harder. “It's my fault.”

“No, Liza, it's fine, I said it’s fine. Please don't cry,” he begs, and she feels even worse. Alexander has never been able to stand seeing her cry, and she's just making everything about her and so much worse.

She shakes her head. “It's my fault, I was so mean to you, and you should be the one upset, and you shouldn't be the one trying to make _me_ feel better.”

“I don't _want_ to be upset,” he says firmly, wiping under her eyes. “I don't want you to be either.”

“But —”

“Eliza, please.” He looks so desperate, and the fight goes out of her immediately.

"Okay. It's fine." She rests her head against his shoulder, lets him pull her closer in with a shuddering sigh. “I want you to be happy.”

“I am.”

“That's all I want. I love you, so much, and I just want —” she takes a breath. “I wish I could save you all that pain. With your family, and stuff. I hate seeing you disappointed and hurt by it still. You don't need him.”

“Eliza,” he sighs. “You can't choose who your family is.”

“You chose me,” she reminds him.

“I did,” he agrees. “I know. But he's who I have, and it's not perfect, but he's my family. I wish it was different, but that doesn't mean I don't care.”

“I know.” She turns her head, kisses his hand where it's wrapped over hers.

“Or that he doesn't care,” he adds quietly.

Eliza can't say it, she can't get past the pain in her chest. Because as much as it hurt him earlier, she meant what she said, and she knows that his father will never be who Alexander so desperately wants him to be.

But she can't be the one to tell him that. She can't break his heart like that, and she doesn't want to. Maybe if she was stronger, if she loved him less, she could. But she can't see him upset like that, not by her own doing.

“Of course he cares,” she says softly. “We can talk about the money tomorrow.”

“Really?”

She nods, not trusting her voice.

“I love you,” he says, eyes warm. “Thank you.”

“I love you too,” she tells him. He looks happy, and that's enough. She can’t do everything, but she can do that.

\---------

The next day they send James Hamilton, Sr. two thousand instead of the requested ten, with an explicit instruction to call upon receipt.

He doesn't call. It's Friday, so Alexander emails him anyway, and again on Monday, and again on Wednesday.

He doesn't respond. Alexander stays at the office until midnight three days in a row. They get through it, because that's what they do.

They don't hear from his father for another five years.

If Alexander notices, and she’s sure he does, the way Eliza exclusively calls their son “Jamie” and demands that everyone else do so as well, he never brings it up.


End file.
